Irby, who represents former Jaguars quarterback David Garrard, claims the organization cut his client because it knew about a herniated-disk injury and withheld that knowledge. Garrard is planning on having surgery to correct the issue.

“At $500,000 per game, they knew he would be down 4-6 weeks. They didn’t want to pay that bill. Now you know the difference between a first-class organization like Indy, and a sorry organization like the Jags. Indy gave their QB a contract even though he couldn’t play all season. … David was told his back was fine. So he took them for their word.

“Now he has to go to surgery, and Jacksonville is saying, 'Not my problem.’ What a first class organization!”

Jacksonville general manager Gene Smith responded in an email stating:

“David went through the standard process that all players go through when released.”

Irby appears to be way off base.

First off, Garrard hasn’t been employed by the Jaguars in nearly six weeks.

Who knows what injury Garrard could’ve sustained in that time frame?

Also, is Irby really comparing David Garrard to Peyton Manning? I’ll rest my case with the following numbers.

I was very suspect when reading Mr. Irby's comments about David needing surgery and the Jags having no class.

Personally, I like David a lot. He is a tremendous role model off the field. Nobody has to defend David in the public arena as his ACTIONS speak for themselves.

David's ACTIONS on the field leave much to be desired. Excuses can be made from his ailing back to not enough blocking to wide receivers that drop passes. I drank from that Kool-Aid often. But the facts are that over the span of 3+ seasons, David has digressed and any one [or more] of the above excuses would have been acceptable over the short haul.

We are fortunate enough to live in an NFL world that expects results Ugly or pretty, winning is the only result that anyone cares about in the NFL. There are no style points no matter how a team wins as getting to the Super Bowl is the ultimate goal. The bottom line is winning and that may include cutting losses. David was a liability [not from a medical standpoint] but from a locker room - morale standpoint. Coaches cannot afford the luxury of having two super star QBs on the active roster as that formula does not work and JDR knows that (aka Gabbert & David or in 2006 David & what's his name from Marshall).

So, were the Jaguars without class when they released David? The three headed monster of leadership lead by Gene Smith admitted as much. They would have handled things differently looking back. I'm sure they would have liked to have thrown together a press conference or had David withdraw from that Chamber luncheon...but what purpose would that have served but a different kind of embarrassment on David and the organization as a whole. Cutting him was the choice and they saved the owner $6,000,000 in the process. Now, lets just think for a minute, if you could walk into your employers office or the owner and say I could save you $6mil and things would not be any worse and could get better, would your boss be impressed? Do you think that might put you in line for greater job security?

If David had a legitimate injury to his back (which he was unaware), surely it would have been discovered sometime during the month of September. During the week of his release, medical personnel are on hand to examine David if he wanted to offer to go on IR [thus ending any chance to play for anyone in 2011] because of his back. We may never know this from the Jags due to confidentiality HIPPA laws or better yet, I think we were dealt a lot of smoke and mirrors by Mr. Irby.

Hays is giving a very educated opinion on the statistical facts AND the reality of the events that HE is close to. Average readers do not have the luxury of being in constant contact with players and staff as Hays does...so you might want to cut the TU staff a little slack there. They may have more information than they can print.

One's stats should have nothing to do with how you're treated--particularly at this point in time when there's possibly a big-time violation of the new NFL collective bargaining agreement.

DOES a player's long-term stature matter? Unfortunately, it does, and there are always those who'll believe Peyton Manning should be treated differently because of his stats. Those people are missing the point, and the chances are they'll never get it.

Did Al Irby make a mistake by making all of this public? Undoubtedly, because there are always people--those who make their living as writers in particular--who are going to take anything and make something as controversial of it as possible. That's certainly happened during the past 24 hours.

Is Irby RIGHT, though? If anything comes of this, perhaps it's that we'll eventually get an answer to that question.

Oh, in regards to posting Garrard's win/loss stats. Does everybody remember when Garrard received that great big pay day in 2007 after having an awesome year? What happened in 2008? Well, he lost one lineman to a gunshot. In the first game, he lost 2 more to IR. That is 3 linemen to IR. It was so bad that one injured lineman had to hop back onto the field because they literally ran out of linemen. Linemen don't grow on trees. Garrard took a beating that year. It is a miracle that the team won 4 games.
Did the line get better in 2009? Yes, but not as good as 2007. You can't recover in one year without paying a lot for free agents.
He got beaten up again in 2009.... and 2010.
My point: you can't go by stats alone. Garrard played great football for the Jags while taking a beating - just like Gabbert is now.

I have no idea if there is any credence to this story or not. But we should all be cautious when an agent speaks. That's like a leech telling others to be careful about the vampire bat...they're both blood suckers.